Image from Megan’s trip to Miami to stage Jerome Bel’s Gala at the Miami ICA in February 2020.

Fidget Co-director Megan Bridge, who met Jerome Bel in 2006, now has the opportunity to play him in a solo that Bel calls an “Auto-bio-choreography” in this year’s Fringe Festival.

Performed as part of the 2022 Fringe Festival.

SHOWTIMES:

September 30 at 7:30pm
October 1 at 7:30pm
October 2 at 3:00pm

French choreographer Jérôme Bel (Gala, The show must go on, Cédric Andrieux) continues his renowned portrait series, this time examining himself. Through a combination of lecture, archival video excerpts, and live dance, Bel constructs a genealogy of the driving forces behind his work—what he calls an “auto-bio-choreo-graphy.” He reflects on the doubts, commitments, failures, and questions present throughout his career and creative process. In this impassioned illumination of the motivations of contemporary performance and postmodern dance, the personal becomes entangled with the artistic and the political. 

For ecological reasons, Bel and his company stopped traveling by plane in 2019. This performance, therefore, relies on a unique collaboration with Philadelphia dancer Megan Bridge (Fidget). Bridge serves as director and translator, in addition to portraying Bel on stage. She embodies Bel’s honesty and vulnerability, holding tension between humanism and formalism. A cast of 10 Philadelphia performers will join Bridge in the performance of this work.